DB Design Lemon Fuzz

DB Design (2007)

This is a completely hand-built fuzz pedal, built from scratch. The electrical components are soldered point to point on a breadboard using the highest quality components chosen to create the best Fuzz sound possible.

This fuzz pedal uses 2 AC128 PNP Germanium transistors to create the old vintage sound of the 60's and 70's. These transistors are very hard to find, as modern day silicon transistors have taken over. Most modern day manufacturers will use silicon transistors these days because they are cheap and easily available, however they seem to lose the vintage "Jimi Hendrix" sound that germanium transistors have to offer.

The pedal also uses a very high quality 3PDT footswitch that you will hardly find on manufactured pedals. The 3PDT switch allows both true bypass and a blue LED to be installed. True bypass means that all the sound is diverted straight through the pedal and not through a buffer. This means they'll be no loss in tone, and when you turn the pedal off, it will actually be off and not be used to power a buffer that manufactures use. The LED indicator displays if the pedal is on and off and emits a very bright blue light that can easily be seen on stage.

I have used an aluminium enclosure which has been polished to a mirror like shine with printed decals to house the components. As you can see it is very shiny and fairly light. The alpha potentiometers are very quiet and the knobs are chosen to match the aesthetics of the design.

The pedal can be powered either by a 9V DC negative tip power supply (not included), or by a 9V battery (not included). The pedal doesn't draw much battery current so it has an extremely long battery life compared with manufactured pedals. Please note this pedal is positively ground. This just means that the pedal will need its own separate 9v DC negative tip power supply and cannot share a DC power connection in a daisy chain with other pedals. It shouldn't be too much of a problem, as the battery life is very good in the pedal.